


Moving Day

by AnonymousSong



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, I Don't Even Know, just something I worked on, moving day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-05
Updated: 2012-10-05
Packaged: 2017-11-15 16:27:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/529266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousSong/pseuds/AnonymousSong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was Moving Day at last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moving Day

**Author's Note:**

> Someone had given me the prompt, Moving Day.  
> Of course, the thing I thought up at first was an actual moving day, moving from one house to another.  
> But I wanted something else and then this story happened.  
> I don't even know.  
> Enjoy my random original work.

It was Moving Day at last.

Not that I was particularly excited about all of it; in fact, I had been dreading it for weeks.

I had already said good-bye to my friends, exchanged numbers and emails if I hadn’t before, promised to keep everyone up to date on life. I had already packed up all my things, sorted them neatly into boxes, and written my name on the side with a bold marker. I had already looked up the area we were moving to and explored it online, seeing what different shops and things were around.

It was not the process of moving that left that twisted pull in my gut.

It was as we walked through the now empty living room for the last time and looked around; the house just seemed so… dead. Mom had painted over all the cracks and replaced the carpet so there was no sign that we had ever lived there. My room had looked much too big without my bed and dresser taking up all the space.

And as we walked down the driveway for the last time, we all looked back together. The house was quiet, just sitting there, right where it had always been. The lights were all off, the curtains drawn, door locked tight. We had taken all the furniture with us, leaving the house bare and cold.

The empty house.

It seemed old now, though we had been told it was only seven or eight years, which is not old at all for a house. But now, it seemed almost as if there were wrinkles near the windows and the grass around the porch looked shot through with gray. As if we had aged it a bit. As if our presence had made it grow older so much faster, like a mother that looked ancient when really, she was still quite young.

I placed a hand on the mailbox. My mother looked at all of us in turn before she turned back to the house and told it one last word.

“Good-bye.”

My father and brother echoed her farewell but I stayed silent.

Even now, I swear, I can still hear all the boards sighing, still see how the windows got darker, as if the house was closing its eyes. The house almost seemed to smile.

“Good-bye.”

We turned and left.

\----------

We turned and left.

The party was ending behind us and the closed door of the apartment hardly covered the noise. I wondered what the neighbors were thinking, if they had called the cops yet.

I took Henry’s hand, both of us smiling much too widely, and climbed into the elevator. The ride down made my stomach rise a bit, which should have been difficult with the amount of alcohol in it.

“Should we drive?” I asked.

Henry was still grinning and it took him a moment to respond. “I can drive, I’m fine. It’s just a few blocks, anyway.”

That sounded like very sound logic to me so I just nodded my head and we exited the elevator once it deposited us on the first floor.

When we finally found the car, which proved to be tricky since I was seeing double at some points, we fell into it and started it up. Music began blaring at us and Henry and I just laughed along with the melody.

Somehow, he managed to pull the car out of the parking space and get onto the road. There weren’t many other cars out at this time of night – early morning? – so we didn’t have to worry that much about depth perception unless we happened upon a stop light.

It was at the fourth of these stops that Henry leaned forward and looked to the right and left and back. 

“Think we can make it?”

“No! The light’s red!”

“But there’s no cars!”

“So? The light’s red! You know you can’t run a red light!”

“There’s no camera on that one and there’s no cars coming. I can make it.”

“Henry, stop! There’s a car coming.”

“That one’s far off. We’ll be two blocks away by the time it crosses. Watch, we’ll make it.”

We didn’t make it.

When the other car slammed into us, I didn’t even have time to scream before everything went black.

I closed my eyes.

\----------

I opened my eyes.

I was in an empty house.

As I stood there, not quite sure what I was doing there, it dawned on me that this was the old house; the one my family and I had moved out of years ago. The one I remember, clear as day, saying good-bye to us.

“Hello?” I called out.

I became aware of a beeping noise. It sounded far off but I looked around, trying to pinpoint where it was coming from.

“Hello?” I called out again.

“Hello,” whispered the floorboards.

“Hello,” creaked the walls.

“Hello,” greeted the lights.

“Hello,” said the house.

The beeping sound grew louder.

I walked forward, following it up the stairs. The handrail felt familiar under my palm and I saw all the nicks and scratches from our years living there. The steps still groaned in the same places and the carpet was the dark gray I remember, not the new color Mom had replaced it with.

“Is anybody there?” I asked to the air.

The beeping increased its volume.

I reached the top of the stairs and the hallway stretched before me. All of the doors were closed except for the one to my old room. The ‘Enter at your own risk’ sign was still hung on it, slightly crooked. It had never felt like a warning to me until now.

With slow steps and a racing heart, I journeyed to the doorway and stepped into the soft light that was streaming out.

I could see the tip of a bed with white sheets. I remember my bed having blue sheets. Slowly, I raised a hand to door and pushed it open with my fingertips.

I stepped into a hospital room. 

The beeping noise was the heart monitor on the side of the hospital bed with the white sheets. The walls reflected the setting sun and seemed to close in on me with every step I took forward.

I stood at the end of the bed.

Besides the heart monitor, the only other noise was heavy breathing, coming from the person lying in those sheets.

Her face was covered with an oxygen mask and bruises. Her scalp was shaved on one side and had a line of stiches. Her body was wrapped in a hospital gown that no doubt had bandages and mending wounds underneath.

I was looking at myself.

My chest moved in time with the vision of myself in that bed and the heartbeat pounding in my ears matched the electronic beep of the heart monitor. 

I felt numb.

“She’s lucky to be alive.”

I turned to see as a doctor walked into the room, followed by my mother. He was holding a clipboard and not looking at me, or at the version of me in the bed. My mother looked at him with large, wet eyes.

“Will she wake up, Doctor Darr?” My mother’s hands were tied around each other, shaking.

“It’s too soon to tell. We’ve relieved the bleeding in her brain but we won’t know the full extent of her injuries until the tests come in.” The man stopped and returned my mother’s gaze. “But there is a chance that she won’t wake up.”

“I’m right here,” I said calmly to the doctor. “Can’t you see? I’m awake.”

Neither of them responded to me. My mother just started silently crying.

“Mom? Please! I’m… I’m right here!” I reached forward to place my hand on her shoulder but she didn’t even twitch under my touch. I felt no warmth from where I was connected with her and when I pushed harder, I watched my hand pass through her shoulder.

Am I a ghost or a spirit of some sort?

The heart monitor continued to beep behind me, reminding me that I am alive. This is too weird. I moved away from my mother and the doctor and ran out of the room.

I stepped back in the hallway of the house. I turned and slammed the door closed.

I could still hear the beeping.

I stood in the hallway for a long time, just listening to the sound of my heartbeat, my hand on the doorknob, not sure what to think.

After a while, I went back downstairs. All of the furniture I remember was there and I climbed onto the couch and curled up into a ball. I closed my eyes and slept.

When I awoke, I couldn’t tell how much time had passed. Everything looked the same. I stayed where I was on the sofa and looked around. 

There was the dent in the wall where I had kicked it. There was the red stain in the carpet from when Dad had dropped a whole pan of lasagna. There was the splatter of paint on the ceiling from when my brother had loosed a paintball.

It was all as I remembered it.

If I listened closely, I could still hear the beeping, coming from upstairs.

I slowly got up and followed the sound until I was standing before the door again. I gripped the knob and walked inside.

It was the middle of the day, according to the walls, and my mother was sitting beside my bed. My father was asleep in a chair in the corner.

As calmly as I could, I walked up to my mother and stood at her side.

“I’m here, Mom.” 

I lightly placed my hand on top of hers, even though I knew she didn’t feel it. I looked at the other me.

The first thing that hit me was that the shaved hair was longer. Maybe only about two inches but it told me it wasn’t simply the next day.

I looked back to the doorway that led to the house. It sat in the middle of the wall, the door hanging open, as if beckoning me back.

What would happen if I went back in there? If I just stayed there? Would that version of me, lying in those white sheets, eyes bruised and closed… Would that version just stop? Die? Could I just live forever in that house of memories?

“Please.”

I looked at my mother. She had a hand against the cheek of the girl asleep in that bed.

“Please,” she whispered again.

To me, I could hear the next word she wanted to say:

_Choose._

Was she talking to me? Or something else? Asking some higher power to just choose to take me away or let me wake up? To not keep them in agony for years, wondering and hoping that maybe I could wake up one day?

I looked back to the door, still inviting me inside.

I turned and walked to it. My hand gripped the doorknob and my chest expanded with a breath. With one movement, I stepped back into the house and closed the door behind me.

I stood in the hallway for a long time. I remembered missing this house after we had moved. Remembered how I had wished I could go back because I missed the hum of the air conditioner and the way it rattled when the wind blew. I remembered longing for the deep creak of the front door as it opened and for the groan of the garage door as it opened.

I remembered vowing that when I was older and grown up and on my own, I would go back and buy this house and live in it to the end of my days. I remembered pouring my memory of this house onto paper, sketching it out to make sure that the design of it never escaped me.

I remembered the house saying good-bye.

I walked down the hallway and as I did, the carpet beneath my feet changed from the dark gray to the beige Mom had picked out and all the scars on the walls were covered over with a fresh coat of white paint.

As I moved down the stairs, the creaks disappeared because Dad had fixed those and the marks on the rail were filled in. The pictures hanging on the walls fell away because we packed those when we moved.

In the living room, the ceiling didn’t have that splatter of yellow anymore, just all white paint and the wall wasn’t dented and the fireplace was actually clean and it shined. The carpet didn’t show just where the coffee table and sofa had been.

“Good-bye,” I said clearly.

The house groaned around me.

“Thank you,” I breathed out.

The room grew warm and I smiled.

I stood in the empty house with its new carpet and paint for just a few moments longer before turning and running back up the stairs that didn’t creak and sprinting for the door that didn’t hold a warning any longer.

I turned the doorknob and exited the house one last time.

It was Moving Day at last.


End file.
